[pwny]

The real issue is that he spits the homework (or take home exam) question as-is on math.stackexchange and has others solve it.

Asking a concrete, directed question meant to understand part of the problem and get him "unstuck" would probably have been fine and expected.

[masklinn]

Indeed, it's exactly the same on developer forums and the like: spit out a homework/exam question and you'll deservedly get slammed. Show you've been working on it but you got stuck, you'll likely get people to give you pointers.